B2B Sales, Lead Generation and Marketing Blog

Have you seen it yet? Hubspot recently released its State of Inbound 2014-2015 report. It’s full of marketing stats that you’re going to want to check out before you finalize any 2015 marketing strategies or plans.

If you’ve been unsure as to what you ought to be focusing on marketing-wise, this report, developed after thousands of marketers were surveyed, will point you in the right directions.

At Vendere Partners, we weren’t surprised to learn that the report reveals that some things that have been working well for our customers in 2014 have been working well for marketers worldwide.

Inbound Marketing Reigns

For one thing, the report reveals that inbound marketing works. In case you need a quick refresher, inbound marketing, according to Marketing Land, a leading online business marketing publication, “refers to marketing activities that bring leads and customers in when they’re ready, rather than you having to go out and wave your arms to try to get people’s attention.” Inbound marketing includes everything from SEO to blogging, videos, podcasts, presentations and e-books—basically, anything that brings the customer to you.

One of the most compelling things that the Hubspot report reveals is that corporate blogging is the biggest inbound marketing winner. According to Hubspot, “companies that blog are 13x more likely to generate a positive marketing ROI.” If you don’t have a blog and you’ve been looking for ways to outdo your competition, now’s the time to start a blog!

We did a little research, and according to WPVirtuoso, a major blog tip provider, there are now at least 152 million blogs on the Internet. If you take the time to read the Hubspot report, you’ll learn that your new company blog should most certainly be number 153 if you truly want to compete in today’s marketplace.

Authorship Update:

A word to the wise: Google Authorship has ended.

We mention this because Google Authorship is still talked about a lot even though the authorship game changed back in August 2014. In a September 2014 Entrepreneur article, Brett Relander, founder of Launch & Hustle and a digital marketing consultant, explains, “In a sense, Google Authorship hasn’t gone away. It’s still here. Search engine results will continue to show author names and link them to the author’s profile page.” He goes on to explain that, “Google’s Author Rank is here to stay, though it still requires refinement.”

Confused? At first, we were, too. Then, we realized that at the end of the day, all of the talk about Google Authorship and Google Rank amounts to remembering one thing: that you need to add a byline that includes an actual person’s name in each and every blog post. Let your SEO guys and the Google folks mind-bend over the details.

The take-aways here?

Read the Hubspot report. Get to blogging. Don’t waste your time debating too much about authorship stuff when you do get to blogging. The game is always changing. The most important thing you need to do is be a part of it.